Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes:

     (a) that Australian citizenship is precious and the community must have confidence that the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 is administered fairly, impartially and with integrity;

     (b) that the law provides that Australian citizenship by conferral is available to everyone who meets the legislated criteria, regardless of visa class; and

     (c) the enormous, inexplicable and unconscionable delays by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in processing thousands of citizenship applications;

(2) acknowledges the devastating impact of delays and uncertainty on affected people, whose lives are in limbo, whose mental health is suffering, who are often unable to travel and who have been separated from their family for many years;

(3) notes the Federal Court of Australia in BMF v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection [2016] case which:

     (a) found that there had been unreasonable delays in the department’s processing of citizenship applications of two men on protection visas who had been waiting 18 months and 23 months, respectively;

     (b) received evidence from the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection that more than 10,000 applications requiring ‘further assessment’ were outstanding as of July 2016, yet only 12 officers in the department were even trained to assess these applications; and

     (c) noted that the evidence provided suggested that something beyond resourcing of the citizenship program had caused very significant delays, and that the possibility of applications being ordered by reference to an ‘unreasonable rationale’ could not be excluded; and

(4) calls on the Government to:

     (a) admit to and apologise for these delays;

     (b) take immediate action to process the full backlog of citizenship applications this year; and

     (c) publicly assure affected people and the wider community that the citizenship function will be administered fairly, impartially and expeditiously in the future.

This motion regarding the growing and unacceptable delays in processing citizenship applications has been moved because it is an enormous issue in my electorate. There are many cases. Since I was elected I have heard from new people every week and, indeed, some weeks, every single day. Bruce is a very multicultural area, with people from everywhere, and I firmly believe that we as MPs have a responsibility to represent everyone in our community—not just the voters, not just the people on the electoral roll, but also young people and permanent residents who are part of the community.

I have written numerous letters to the minister on this issue and have received unsatisfactory responses with no explanation. So in recent months I have spoken to colleagues and I have realised that what I was seeing locally is just the tip of the iceberg with what we are seeing across Australia. Finally, in December 2016, the Federal Court of Australia exposed the scale of this issue: over 10,000 complex cases with no clear rationale for the delays, and they admitted that there were only 12 people in the department who had been trained to assess these cases. This motion calls on the government to apologise, to clear the backlog and to fix the mess.

Australian citizenship is precious. Formal membership of the Australian community brings rights and obligations and the whole community must have full confidence in how cases are considered and how citizenship is granted. Central to this is the concept of integrity: integrity in applying the law—Australia has a rule of law, and the government is not above it; integrity in who gets citizenship; and integrity in administration. The process must be effective, efficient and free from politics. What we are seeing fails these tests. But it is not just an administrative issue; it is also a human issue. These are not just 10,000 cases; every single case is a person with a human story and a family. Distraught, upset and frustrated people flood my office because nothing has happened with their application for months or years and years and years. I see the pain of grown men at my front counter and in my office sobbing, breaking down and telling me about their suicide counselling and the mental health impacts of knowing that they cannot visit their dying parents and cannot see their families that they have been separated from for five, six, seven, eight or more years—and we have DIBP: 'Don't call us, we'll call you,' with no answers and no time lines.

Across the country a pattern seems to have emerged of certain classes of people being targeted, such as those on protection visas. The Liberal government denies that there is a deliberate policy, but the evidence indicates that there is a systemic problem. These are not isolated cases. This is consistent with this minister's pattern of seeking more power now through the visa revalidation bill to attack certain classes of people. Instead of the minister polishing his head in his office and counting the numbers for the leadership, he should do his job with his department and process these cases.

Ensuring new migrants settle here in our society—on which we have a proud record—is critical, but stalling their citizenship application for years, for people who live here and work and pay taxes, is unbearably cruel. They cannot move on with their lives. I have spoken before about the public meeting that I held in my electorate with the member for Isaacs, where we had over 400 people who had the courage to speak up in a public forum about their cases. They are not just workers; we have also heard from students who cannot complete their degrees because they cannot get a passport to travel overseas to do the international units—for example, masters students studying civil engineering. There is no explanation and no care from the minister or the department.

As with the Federal Court case, what the law says is that if someone meets the requirements to have citizenship conferred then they should be processed. The requirements in the act are quite simple and they are quite clear. It does not matter where people are from or how they arrived here; the minister must follow the law. Of course some cases are difficult because of identification. Of course some cases are difficult if there are national security issues. That is not at issue. But those things alone do not explain the delays that we are seeing.

Until last week, the general target had been 80 per cent in 80 days. Mysteriously, the minister changed the standards with the department last week, and he is now saying that, from 14 March, it will be 75 per cent in 10 months and 90 per cent in 12 months. He just slipped that one on the website. That does not help the thousands of cases that have been sitting in the bottom drawer for two or three years. The Federal Court case that I referred to is very clear. There is no time line in the act, but the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act applies, and ministers cannot unreasonably delay decisions. The evidence in the court case suggests that 'something beyond the resourcing or the restructuring of the citizenship program caused these significant delays.' It is not acceptable that two people went to court and got priority. Everyone should be confident that they are assessed fairly in a fair queue, and I quote from the court:

The fact that an applicant who institutes court proceedings is given priority suggests an arbitrariness which does not engender confidence that a reasonable allocation mechanism was being applied.

The government should fix this—or Labor, when we form government, will.

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